Nancy Flanagan at Oxbow Gallery

September 13, 2010

Nancy Flanagan has opened a solo show at the Oxbow Gallery in Northampton, MA. The show runs from Aug. 30 to Sept. 26. For those able to visit the gallery, the address is 275 Pleasant Street. The gallery is open Thursday through Sunday, from 12pm – 5 pm.

Flanagan is not an artist for the timid. Her work has always been assertive, using intense, bold color and strong brushwork. In her landscapes, she knows how to use sunlight and shadow, summer and winter. To date, the hallmark of Flanagan’s landscape style is the creation of timelessness and peace in her paintings. The landscapes, both city and country, have this quality.

The Oxbow show – paintings and drawings – show another side of Flanagan. These paintings continue her bold use of color and strong brushwork, but they have an immediacy that is astonishing.

No longer is a field or a building eternal. Instead, it is going to change in the next instant and you have the sense that you’re seeing the motion and movement that will cause the change. Each of the paintings and drawings has this quality.

This sense of immediacy isn’t new to Flanagan. She does this with her portraits. She captures a moment in a life. What is extraordinary in the Oxbow show paintings and drawings is that she has transformed her landscapes with this same vitality.

Flanagan’s work has benefited from the absence of the academic environment. She is no longer constrained by the fundamentals she is teaching. Her work is exciting and refreshing. This is an excellent solo program from a superb, mature painter.